Tag Archives: thank you and goodnight

It is with a slightly heavy heart – a heart that has been removed by a cackling scientist perhaps, and refitted with a combination of wheels and obese hamsters – it is with a hamster-heavy heart that I must tell you I am stepping down as editor of Dark Fiction Magazine (if you go there now you will see this post and a rather alarming picture of zombie me)

Unfortunately, it’s not for any particularly dramatic reason. The bodies have yet to be discovered (despite my notes) and we’ve all agreed to forget about the business with the elephant, so I won’t be flouncing off in a cloud of internet stink. The sad fact is that the time I would once put aside for reading submissions and wrangling narrators has recently become so vanishingly small that I now have difficulty finding it, even with the help of micro-goblins. These days I’m spending every spare moment working on my fantasy book (The Copper Promise, out in February from Headline books, first in a trilogy, no I’m not above plugging it here) and those characters take up a lot of headspace.

But, you know, it’s been a good couple of years. We’ve found some excellent stories, uncovered some new writers, and I’m proud of the work we’ve done. Short fiction, and particularly short genre fiction, is in fine health, and there’s some exciting stuff out there. I look forward to watching where it goes next. And Dark Fiction Magazine won’t be disappearing into a black hole with me; it will be passing over to the fine and excellent folks at Spacewitch, who will be taking it to new and saucy places, no doubt.

I am enormously grateful to the marvellous people that willingly gave of their free time and wicked skillz to make this thing work, particularly Marty Perrett, an awesome audio producer (known as Doug Strider in his local for reasons relatively undisclosed), and to Blane Traynor, Shock the Badger, who has provided us with some fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to the narration team, who are all excellent and very attractive, and to everyone who submitted a story.

And to the writers who have featured in the magazine over the years: cheers, guys. I think we did a beautiful thing.